On Friday HBO’s Bill Maher chastised former Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile for continuously mispronouncing the name of 2024 Republican presidential primary candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
During a panel discussion that also featured former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, best known for Never Trump activism and his role on the January 6 Committee, Brazile said on Maher’s program Real Time, “Vivek needs to just shut the hell up.”
Maher pointed out that she was mispronouncing his first name, noting that the second syllable rhymed with “cake.”
As in “Viv-ake.”
Watch here:
RACISM: Donna Brazil purposefully mispronounces @VivekGRamaswamy name and publicly called on him to return ‘home’ presumably to India (FWIW Vivek was born in America). pic.twitter.com/WXwyPZgbnh
— @amuse (@amuse) November 19, 2023
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Maher: ‘I just feel there’s a little racism there’
“I’m Donna, is it Viveck Ramasama? … Vivek needs to go home,” Brazile said.
“I just feel like there’s something wrong with everyone refusing to learn his name,” Bill Maher responded. “I just feel there’s a little racism there… I know we don’t like him but say his name right… It is Vivek because I heard him do a rap and he said it rhymes with cake.”
“This is what the CNN audience needs to know,” Maher said to audience laughter.
Ramaswamy replied to the sleights on Sunday, implying that if some roles and races were reversed, Brazile’s comment would more clearly be considered racist, as Maher implied.
I wonder what they’d do if a white Republican intentionally mispronounced Donna’s name & then told her to return “home.” 😂 https://t.co/UIfiSCU6p6
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) November 19, 2023
What Would Happen if a White Republican…
“I wonder what they’d do if a white Republican intentionally mispronounced Donna’s name & then told her to return ‘home,” Ramaswamy pondered on X.
Ramaswamy, an Indian-American who was born in Ohio, apparently took “return home” as meaning returning to his ancestral country. While it wasn’t clear that Brazile meant that and could have just meant she wanted Ramaswamy to leave the presidential race, Ramaswamy does have a point about how quickly many might jump to racist conclusions if the target were instead a black person and similar things were said.
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The Ramaswamy campaign framed Brazile’s comments as “reverse racism.”
“Reverse racism is racism,” said the campaign’s communications director and senior adviser, Tricia McLaughlin, to the Daily Mail.
She added, “If that were a white Republican they would be fired and torn to shreds on cable TV. Donna will probably get an ‘atta boy’ from her colleagues. Gross.”
The latest Five Thirty Eight average of polls puts Ramaswamy at 5.2% in the GOP primary.
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Brazil has had her hand caught in the cookie jar before
Vivek is a jerk and he shows it with his disrespectful performances every time he is on tv.
Well sometimes you just need to tune people out as far as Donna Brazile, is concerned! We do not like either of them! We hear people say our name wrong all the time, so we ignore them until they say excuse me, who’s name is being said wrong please, if they start to walk away we will say are you trying to say blank name? Then we say we are so sorry!
Blacks make the best racists. Look around. Right or wrong?
Hum, racism at its finest.